The Day the Music Exploded

Disco is an odd genre of music. It seems like alternative rock to be stuck in its own decade.
Rock n' roll, country-western, rap have all grown through the decade. Even folk music still continues to be produced.
But disco only seems to last in the 1970s. The pinnacle of disco music was Saturday Night Fever, which most people remember from this

It seemed everything had to more or less focus on disco. We had movies like Thank God, It's Friday and Roller Boogie, trying to capture the disco golden ball.
Even Bill Cosby used it and Cosby always seems to be out of reach with what's hip. But there's this:

In light of the allegations of rape and sexual assault against the Cos, this photo looks a hell of a lot creepier now than it probably did in the late 1970s.
But some people had enough of it. So, on July 12, 1979, the Disco Demolition Night happened.
A PR stunt by Bill Veeck, owner of the Chicago White Sox, along with a Chicago DJ Steve Dahl, was an attempt to get more fans to attend a White Sox game. If attendees brought a disco album with them, they would be able to purchase a ticket for only 98 cents and the disco album would be placed in a pile that would be detonated during the doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers.
Unfortunately, Veeck, Dahl and others had underestimated how the Chicago area would enjoy to see a huge explosion.
Originally, only 20,000 were anticipated, which was about 5,000 more than the usual people in attendance. But an estimated 50,000 people were in attendance, some there who had jumped the fences after the exit to Comiskey Park had been blocked to keep people from arriving.
The staff hadn't collected all albums and fans through the records on to the field.
So, after the first game ended, Dahl and others led the crowd in a chant of "Disco Sucks!" and then the outfield exploded.
Unfortunately, there had been another underestimation of people remaining in their seats cheering as thousands rushed the field.
One of those was a young man who would later become a famous actor by the name Michael Clark Duncan.

Yes, that guy was also there.
Police had to show up in full riot gear because people were dancing around the destruction and setting a bonfire on the field.
The White Sox and Tigers didn't get a chance to play the second game as officials forfeited it to the Tigers.
MLB officials didn't allow the White Sox to change the schedule up, either as they were allowed to spend the rest of the season playing on the destroyed field.
The event helped steer the end of disco which went into decline following this incident and record companies labeled disco as "dance music."
Veeck was forced to resign following the incident.
The event would be debated over for the next several decades as some people compared the demolition to book burning in other countries and some have said it was a example of the end of the care-free era of sex and drugs that had had started in the 1960s and continued through the 1970s as the working class of Chicago said, "No more."
Regardless, the event just shows that sometimes you can't expect people to remain calm when they are in mass populations.